The Honest Anguish of a Saint Text: Job 6:8-13
Introduction: The School of Honest Pain
We come now to a passage that makes many modern evangelicals profoundly uncomfortable. We live in a therapeutic age, an age of managed emotions and curated appearances. We are taught, often implicitly, that the life of faith is supposed to be one of perpetual, smiling victory. And when a brother is struck down, when he is laid low by the heavy hand of God's providence, our first instinct is often to rush in with tidy theological formulas and cheerful platitudes, much like the miserable comforters who sat before Job.
But the book of Job refuses to play by our tidy rules. It pulls back the curtain on the raw, unfiltered agony of a righteous man under the severe discipline of God. Job's words here are not pretty. They are not sanitized for our protection. He is a man on the rack, and he is crying out. He longs for death. He questions the very purpose of his endurance. And in doing so, he gives us a divine license for a kind of brutal honesty with God that our shallow piety often forbids.
We must understand the context. Job has been hammered. He has lost everything, his wealth, his children, his health. He is sitting on an ash heap, scraping his oozing sores with a piece of pottery. And to top it all off, his friend Eliphaz has just delivered the first of many speeches, which can be summarized as, "You must have sinned, Job. Repent, and it will all get better." It is prosperity theology, ancient and modern. It is the neat and tidy lie that righteousness always results in immediate, tangible blessing, and suffering is always the direct result of some specific, unconfessed sin. It is a lie because while sin does lead to ruin, it does not follow that all ruin points to a particular sin.
Job's response is not a theological treatise. It is a howl of pain. But it is a howl directed God-ward. And this is the crucial distinction. The ungodly man in his suffering curses God and dies. The godly man in his suffering cries out to God, even when that cry is filled with anguish, confusion, and a desperate longing for the end. This passage is a master class in the anatomy of godly despair. It teaches us that faith is not the absence of pain, but the refusal to let go of God in the midst of it.
The Text
"Oh that my request might come to pass, And that God would grant my hope! Would that God were willing to crush me, That He would release His hand and cut me off! But it is still my comfort, And I rejoice in unsparing pain, That I have not at all hidden away the words of the Holy One. What is my strength, that I should wait? And what is my end, that I should endure? Is my strength the strength of stones, Or is my flesh bronze? Is it that there is no help within me, And that the success of sound wisdom is driven from me?"
(Job 6:8-13 LSB)
A Desperate Hope (vv. 8-9)
Job begins with a prayer that sounds, to our ears, like the very opposite of a prayer.
"Oh that my request might come to pass, And that God would grant my hope! Would that God were willing to crush me, That He would release His hand and cut me off!" (Job 6:8-9)
Job's hope is for death. Let that sink in. He is asking God to finish the job. The Accuser was permitted to strike his body, but not to take his life. Job is now asking God to override that restriction. The verb "crush" is a violent one. He is not asking for a gentle release, but for a final, decisive end to his suffering. He sees God's hand as the source of his affliction, and he asks for that same hand to be released fully, to "cut him off" like a thread from a loom.
Is this a sin? Is it wrong to long for death? The apostle Paul himself said that he had a desire "to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better" (Phil. 1:23). The difference, of course, is the motive and the context. Paul's desire was driven by a longing for Christ's presence. Job's desire is driven by an escape from unbearable pain. And yet, the Scriptures record this prayer without condemnation. Why? Because Job is still looking to God. He is not contemplating taking matters into his own hands. He is not cursing God. He is submitting his desperation to God's sovereignty. He is, in effect, saying, "Lord, you are the one doing this. If it is your will, please finish it."
This is a crucial lesson for us when we minister to those in deep affliction. We must not be too quick to rebuke the cry of pain. Sometimes the most spiritual thing a person can do is admit their utter desperation to the only one who can do anything about it. Job's prayer is not an act of rebellion, but a profound, albeit agonizing, act of submission. He recognizes that his life and death are in God's hands, and he is appealing to the one in charge.
The Comfort of a Clear Conscience (v. 10)
In the midst of this dark request, a flicker of light appears. It is a strange and wonderful comfort.
"But it is still my comfort, And I rejoice in unsparing pain, That I have not at all hidden away the words of the Holy One." (Job 6:10)
This is a staggering statement. Job says he can find comfort, even joy, in his relentless pain for one reason: his conscience is clear before God. He has not denied, concealed, or disobeyed the words of God. This is a direct refutation of Eliphaz's entire argument. Eliphaz assumes Job's suffering is the fruit of hidden sin. Job declares that his integrity in the face of suffering is his only remaining solace.
Notice the title he uses for God: "the Holy One." This is significant. Job is not claiming sinless perfection. He knows he is a man. But he is claiming covenant faithfulness. He has not committed some great transgression that would warrant this level of destruction. He has held fast to God's revealed will. In the furnace of affliction, the testimony of a good conscience is a treasure beyond price. As Paul would later say, "For our proud confidence is this: the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world" (2 Cor. 1:12).
This is why we must labor to keep a clear conscience in times of ease. You do not know what trials are coming. When the storm hits, and your feelings are in turmoil, and your theology is being tested to its limits, the anchor of a life lived in submission to God's Word will hold you fast. Job's one comfort was not that he understood his circumstances, but that he knew he had not betrayed his God.
The Limits of Human Strength (vv. 11-13)
Having stated his one comfort, Job now returns to the reality of his condition. He is at the end of his rope, and he knows it.
"What is my strength, that I should wait? And what is my end, that I should endure? Is my strength the strength of stones, Or is my flesh bronze?" (Job 6:11-12)
Job is doing a frank inventory of his own resources, and he is coming up empty. He asks two penetrating questions. First, "What is my strength?" On what basis should I be expected to hold on? He answers with a rhetorical question of his own. He is not made of stone or bronze. He is flesh, and his flesh is failing. He is acknowledging his creaturely limits. This is not a failure of faith; it is a statement of fact. God knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust (Ps. 103:14). Job is simply agreeing with God's assessment of him.
His second question is, "What is my end?" What is the purpose or goal of my endurance? If there is no light at the end of the tunnel, why should I keep crawling through it? This is the cry of a man who has lost sight of the purpose in his pain. His friends see only a simple cause-and-effect world. Job knows it is not that simple, but he cannot yet see the larger, sovereign purpose that God is working out. He feels that his suffering is pointless, and pointless suffering is the very definition of hell.
He concludes his lament with a statement of utter helplessness:
"Is it that there is no help within me, And that the success of sound wisdom is driven from me?" (Job 6:13)
He looks inward for a source of strength, for some reservoir of "help," and finds nothing. He looks for "sound wisdom," for a practical solution or a way out, and finds that it has been utterly banished. He is bankrupt. He has nothing left. And this, brothers and sisters, is often the place where God meets us most powerfully.
It is the end of all self-reliance. It is the death of the bootstrap mentality. Job is brought to the point where he must learn that his strength is not the strength of stones, because God's strength is made perfect in weakness. He must learn that there is no help within him, so that he might find his help in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. This is the painful stripping away of every human support, so that he might be left with God alone.
The Gospel According to Job's Anguish
This passage is dark, but it is not without Christ. For in Job's suffering, we see a faint shadow of a greater suffering to come. There was another righteous man, one who truly had no sin, who was crushed by the hand of God. On the cross, Jesus Christ cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He was brought to a place of utter desolation, not for any sin of His own, but for ours.
Job longed for God to crush him to end his pain. But it pleased the Lord to crush His only Son to end ours (Isaiah 53:10). Job felt that sound wisdom had been driven from him. But Christ is the very wisdom of God, and on the cross, He endured the foolishness of God which is wiser than men (1 Cor. 1:25). Job felt he had no strength left. Christ, in His weakness, conquered sin, death, and the devil.
And because of Christ's ultimate suffering, our suffering is never pointless. It is not meaningless. God is not just putting us through the wringer for no reason. He is conforming us to the image of His Son. He is teaching us, as He taught Job, that our strength is not in ourselves, our hope is not in our circumstances, and our comfort is not in our understanding. Our strength, our hope, and our comfort are all found in a person: the Lord Jesus Christ, our kinsman-redeemer who lives, and who will one day stand upon the earth.
Therefore, when you find yourself in the ash heap, do not be afraid to be honest with God. Bring your anguish, your confusion, and your desperation to Him. But as you do, cling to this one comfort that Job held, and which we hold in a far greater way: that you have not denied the words of the Holy One. Cling to the finished work of Christ. And know that even when you feel you have no strength, you are being held by hands that are not made of stone or bronze, but by hands that were pierced for you.